Future Tense

Prosecutors Are Planning to Sell Millions of Dollars Worth of Seized Bitcoin

This stash was worth less than $500,000 in 2016.

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Prosecutors got approval from a federal judge in Utah to sell more than 513 bitcoins and 512 bitcoin cash they had seized from a man allegedly running a counterfeit pharmaceuticals ring on the darknet, Ars Technica reports.

The cryptocurreny was taken from Aaron Shamo, who was arrested a year ago. At current prices, the bitcoins would be worth more than $8 million, while the bitcoin cash would sell for almost $1 million.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Utah filed the request on Tuesday to cash in the stash, which is currently in a government-owned digital wallet, noting that the coins could lose value due to the volatility of the cryptocurrency. (Bitcoin’s value fell by more than $1,000 within 10 minutes at the end of November.)  The agency that investigates a case usually gets the proceeds from the seized assets.

The money from the sale will be held in an account at the Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture until Shamo’s case is resolved. He has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges, but the trial has not yet been scheduled. Greg Skordas, his attorney, is not contesting the sale.

When authorities originally apprehended Shamo in November 2016, his bitcoin trove was worth less than $500,000. The cryptocurrency’s price has shot up since then, rising over 1,000 percent just this year.

The government has accrued millions of dollars from sales of seized bitcoin in recent years. Authorities sold almost 30,000 bitcoins confiscated from the Silk Road marketplace on the darknet in 2014. In November, U.S. attorneys began the forfeiture process for 1,400 bitcoins that they had seized from Shaun Bridges, a former Secret Service agent who was arrested for stealing money from dealers during an investigation into the Silk Road. That stash is worth around $23.6 million at current prices.